Hello Bali!

Doris and I have just returned from a glorious week at a resort in Bali. We now know a lot more about this tropical paradise, which is one of roughly 13,000 islands comprising Indonesia. We spent a good deal of time just lounging on the beach or around the pool at the resort, sipping tropical drinks:

. . . but we also hired a car and driver and took some excursions. Some of the more interesting things we learned during our visit:

-- It's difficult to adjust to Indonesian currency. It felt truly weird to give, as a tip, a piece of paper currency with "10,000" written on it, despite continually reminding ourselves that this equated to a little more than one US dollar.

-- Bali is 90% Hindu and 10% Muslim, resulting in a very tolerant environment, which is in considerable contrast to some other parts of Indonesia, where religious violence instigated by Islamic fundamentalists is a recurring problem.

-- Kite flying is a routine source of entertainment for the locals. The wind blows almost continuously in Bali, so we often would see one or more kites somewhere in the sky.

We also learned that the Balinese consider monkeys to be sacred. In fact, we visited a "sacred monkey forest," populated by more than 400 wild monkeys of all sizes. At one point during our tour of the forest, as I was fiddling with my camera, an adult monkey leapt onto my shoulders.

Doris kept her cool and snapped some photos (these could have come in handy when filing a life insurance claim), while I tried to remain calm, pretending I didn't mind having an animal on my back. I had read the sign at the entrance to the forest, warning against touching or playing with the monkeys, as they might react in an unpredictable manner and could pose a health risk. My biggest worry was getting bitten. Fortunately, I avoided this fate, although I had to spend the rest of the day touring with a lot of dirty paw prints all over my t-shirt.

Pictured below is a graveyard in the monkey forest. No, this doesn't contain the bodies of rabies-infested tourists. It does include the grave of our tour guide's mother, however:

Our guide explained that people are buried only temporarily, until the town's next cremation ceremony is scheduled, at which point the bodies are exhumed and burned. I'm inserting a photo showing the temple area in which the bodies are prepared for cremation.

A stone statue next to the entrance shows an evil spirit devouring a child. Now, how inviting is that?!

We passed many rice fields on our tour and watched some people harvesting rice:

We also visited a stone sculpting shop:

Pictured below is a beautifully carved piece depicting the Indonesian version of Romeo and Juliet:

We also stumbled upon an open-air performance by elementary school children. The little girl dancers were amazingly talented, and we enjoyed seeing the non-performing children just as much.

Speaking of little girls, it's really difficult to differentiate between very young girls and adult women in Indonesia. Man, these people are just so tiny compared to Americans! Here's a photo of Doris standing next to the sales lady in a Crocs shoe store:

We enjoyed watching women balance things on their heads—sometimes baskets and, in one surprising case, a load of lumber:

Near the end of the day, we toured a Hindu temple overlooking beautiful scenery:

The temple grounds, again, were populated by monkeys, including this blissfully incontinent mama:

These particular monkeys, though, had evolved beyond the simple pleasure of startling tourists by leaping on their backs and had engineered a profitable scam involving the Balinese grounds keepers. As one enters the temple grounds, a sign warns against wearing eyeglasses, jewelry, hats, etc. I suspect most tourists think these rules are designed to avoid offending the religious sensibilities of the Balinese people. As our tour guide explained, however, the warnings are aimed at the practice of monkeys in stealing these items from visitors. We saw this happen to a Japanese man. Before the man knew what was going on, the thieving monkey was sitting in a nearby tree, bending and chewing on the man's eyeglasses.

A grounds keeper quickly appeared and tossed a bag of peanuts to the monkey. The monkey took the peanuts in exchange for the glasses, and the grounds keeper then offered the glasses (broken lens and all) to the Japanese man in exchange for a monetary "reward," which the man readily paid.

We ended our day of touring by watching a Balinese play and fire dance. This lengthy, culturally significant performance by a large number of local men, involved a lot of rhythmic chanting, singing and yelling in Balinese and is difficult to describe. The best summary I can come up with is men's glee club meets high school marching band on acid:

The final scene in the play involves a Balinese man stomping out brush fires with his feet (see earlier reference to acid).

We felt reasonably safe throughout our trip, despite driving past "ground zero" at one point, marking the spot where, in 2002, an al-Qaeda-affiliated terrorist group detonated a car bomb and killed more than 200 people—many of them tourists. As our tour guide reminded us, when we avoid places because of past terrorist activities, the terrorists win, so I felt that, in some small way, we thumbed our noses at those whose aim is to instill fear.